Celebrating Black History Month with the RCN NW Multicultural Group

From Allyship to Action: Building an Inclusive, Anti-Racist Future for Nursing

22 Oct 2026, 10:00 - 16:00
6 Mount Street, , Manchester, M2 5NS

Free

Book onto our celebration for Black History Month.

Join us for a full day at the Friend's Meeting House in Manchester to celebrate Black History Month!

North west members are invite to join us in celebration alongside the RCN President, who is making a special trip to Manchester to join us for part of the day.  This year we will be exploring the theme: From Allyship to Action: Building an Inclusive, Anti-Racist Future for Nursing.

The event, organised by the member-led North West Multicultural Group, will hear from speakers including:

Estephanie Dunn: Non-Executive Director of the Caribbean and African Health Network (CAHN)

Estephanie will discuss exceptionalism and how intentional and unintentional actions can negatively impact equity, inclusion and belonging in healthcare. Her session will encourage reflection on bias, challenge inequitable practices, and promote more inclusive workplaces for all.

Temitope Babajide: General Practice Nurse

Creator of both the General Practice Nurse Starter Manual and a separate nursing-themed colouring book, will share her inspiring journey in primary care. Her session will recognise and celebrate the historic and ongoing contributions of Black nurses, while showcasing the achievements, leadership and influence of Black nursing professionals in the North West and beyond.

Patricia Hughes: Associate Director RCN : Nursing Practice Nursing

Patricia will focus on equality, leadership and career progression, encouraging greater representation of Black nurses in senior and decision-making roles.

Bejoy Sebastian: RCN President

The President, will discuss the importance of allyship and the role nursing professionals play in creating anti-racist, inclusive workplaces. He will recognise and celebrate the significant contributions of Black nurses to the NHS and wider health and social care sector. The session will explore how inclusive leadership, workforce equality standards and fair career progression can help create a culture of belonging. Attendees will be encouraged to take practical action to challenge discrimination, support equality and inspire the next generation of nursing leaders.

Anandi Ramamurthy: Professor of Media and Culture, Sheffield Hallam University; Principal Investigator, Nursing Narratives: Racism and the Pandemic; Co-Editor, Anti-Racist Nursing and Midwifery: A Resource for Students, Practitioners and Activists.

The Anti-Racist Nursing and Midwifery book, the Nursing Narratives research project, and the film 'Exposed'.

There will also be a panel discussion and a poetry workshop and 'Allyship in Action' challenge workshop in the afternoon. 

Book now to avoid missing out. This event will take place in person and is open to all North West members. A sandwich lunch is provided. 

For further information regarding the aims and objectives of the NW Multicultural Group, please visit our webpage. 

Olanike Babalola

Olanike.Babalola AT reps.rcn.org.uk

Submit your pitch for Black History Month 2025

London Arts and Health
and The Culture Health and Wellbeing Alliance

To celebrate Black History Month this year, London Arts and Health and The Culture Health and Wellbeing Alliance will commission six artists to explore and showcase their creative practices. This initiative is rooted in the belief that the arts can be a powerful force for health, climate justice, and cultural empowerment.

More details ...

Play - “The Ballad of Crooked Lane” 6th & 7th Oct.

Media Release - 

Blind Poet’s Life to be Celebrated in New Play. 

The life of Edward Rushton, Blind Poet and key figure in the Campaign against Slavery, will be spotlighted in a new production by Valley Theatre Drama Group in Liverpool. The play – entitled “The Ballad of Crooked Lane” – is set on the day Rushton, now well into middle age, awaits eye surgery to regain his sight. While waiting, he goes over his eventful life with his friend and biographer, William Shepherd, the Minister of Gateacre Chapel.

“Rushton was a larger-than-life character,” says writer and director Tom Mclennan. “The story is that he lost his sight going below deck to help sick African captives on their way to the plantations. I first read about him in Bill Hunter’s biography “Unsung Hero” and have always felt his life deserves more recognition.”

Apart from campaigning against the slave trade – not always a popular thing to do in those days, since a large amount of Liverpool’s wealth was based on the evil triangular trade – Rushton was also instrumental in establishing the Liverpool School for the Blind, one of the first in the country, as well as being at the forefront of efforts to end the notorious pressgangs that terrorised coastal neighbourhoods, intent on kidnapping sailors for the British Navy.

“The Ballad of Crooked Lane” will be performed as part of a double bill along with Day Sheehan’s “Wake” for the Liverpool Fringe on Monday October 6th, 7.30pm, at Valley Theatre n Netherley, and on Tuesday 7th October, 7.30pm, at The Studio Beyond, 63 Wood Street, Liverpool L1 4AL

Entrance for the Valley Theatre event is free (pay a donation if you like it). Tickets for the Studio Beyond are £8/£6 and can be bought from:

https://store.makeitwrite.org/product/balladandwake/

I read a part for this at Valley Theatre, very interesting and will look to see a performance.

See also: Edward Rushton: Who was this blind revolutionary?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-ouch-29957645

My source: https://www.philosophyinpubs.co.uk/

Currently reading, Arnold Wesker's 'The Friends'.
https://www.arnoldwesker.com/plays/the-friends/index.html

Benjamin Zephaniah Day

Benjamin Zephaniah

Festival of Rhythm, Unity and Revolution Honouring Benjamin Zephaniah

Previously: poetry :: Black :: racism

My source: BBC Radio 4 Today

Feb 2025 Black History Month - Maths & Nursing

 Contributions of Famous Black Mathematicians

Image c/o https://mathandmovement.com/

and Major Nancy Leftenant-Colon

'Trailblazing black nurse who made national news by being the first to join the regular US army'.

Leftenant-Colon, above centre - joined the regular military in 1948 as
a member of the US Army Nurse Corps. Her work had to be outstanding

Nancy Leftenant-Colon

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Leftenant-Colon

My source: print copy -
Register, Major Nancy Leftenant-Colon. Obituaries. The Times, 15 February 2025, pp.70-71.
and photograph plus caption.

All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family Keepsake - Book

INDIVIDUAL

|

     INTERPERSONAL    :     SCIENCES               

HUMANISTIC --------------------------------------  MECHANISTIC      

SOCIOLOGY  :   POLITICAL 

|

GROUP

	Shameran81, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
"My great grandmother Rose mother of Ashley gave her this sack when she was sold at age 9 in South Carolina it held a tattered dress 3 handfulls of  pecans a braid of Roses hair. Told her  It be filled with my Love always she never saw her again Ashley is my grandmother Ruth Middleton 1921"

Miles, T. (2023) All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family Keepsake. London: Profile Books.
https://profilebooks.com/work/all-that-she-carried/

Scholes, L. (2023) Stitches in time, FT Weekend, Life&Arts, Books, 5-6 August, p.8.

Tuskegee Healing, the Moral Determinants of Health, and the Ethics of Research on Black Health

My source: SpiritOf1848 list - Lachlan Forrow

Research Ethics Consortium: Tuskegee Healing, the Moral Determinants of Health, and the Ethics of Research on Black Health

February 17, 2023 | 12:30 - 2 p.m. ET | Live on Zoom | Register Here

The USPHS Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male at Tuskegee and Macon County began in 1932, after US Public Health Service doctors recorded a 39.8% prevalence of syphilis among patients seen in Macon County, Alabama during a treatment study in one corner of the county. While these data might have raised many possible research questions, USPHS doctors chose to focus on the natural history of untreated syphilis.

They not only denied participants the treatments available in the 1930’s; they also chose to continue to study untreated syphilis long after highly-effective, inexpensive, and extraordinarily safe treatment with penicillin became widely available. While the research methods they used are now universally condemned, far less attention has been given to more fundamental questions about the ethics of research, including:

What should the goals of research even be? Who should decide those? What are the most crucial ethical characteristics of relationships between investigators and research subjects?

Introductory Remarks:

• Carmen J. Thornton, MPH, MCHES
  Director of Research, Development, and Workforce, American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
  Consultant, Voices for Our Fathers Legacy Foundation
  Granddaughter of Fred Tyson, subject in USPHS Syphilis Study at Tuskegee

Presenters:

• Susan M. Reverby, PhD
  Marion Butler McLean Professor Emerita in the History of Ideas
  Professor Emerita of Women's and Gender Studies, Wellesley College
  Author of Examining Tuskegee: The Infamous Syphilis Study and Its Legacy
• Jesse Milan, Jr., JD
  President and CEO, AIDS United
• Wangui Muigai, PhD
  Assistant Professor, Brandeis University
  Greenwall Faculty Scholar, class of 2025

Moderator:

• Lachlan Forrow, MD
  Director, Ethics & Palliative Care Program, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
  Lecturer on Global Health and Social Medicine, Part-time, Harvard Medical School
  President, The Albert Schweitzer Fellowship

Commentator:

• David Augustin Hodge, Sr., DMin, PhD
  Associate Director of Education and Associate Professor, National Center for Bioethics in Research and Health Care, Tuskegee University

Support provided by the Oswald DeN. Cammann Fund at Harvard University.

This will build from two November 2022 events (see their flyers below) commemorating the 90th/50th/25th anniversaries of the USPHS Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male at Tuskegee and Macon County, the first organized/hosted by the National Center for Bioethics at Tuskegee University, the second organized/hosted by CDC (see details and video of that here; the first 2min30sec include Dr. Termika Smith’s wonderful intro [60 seconds] and President Biden’s remarks [90 seconds]. 

I would also strongly recommend watching ~5 minutes starting at 11min45sec – Mrs. Lillie Head, daughter of Fred Tyson, one of the men in the Study, and founder/leader of Voices for Our Fathers Legacy Foundation, explaining what the Study was really about (i.e. the moral issues were racism, dehumanization, etc. etc., not just “failures of informed consent”). 

For our Feb 17 session, after presentations by Carmen J. Thornton (Lillie Head’s daughter, i.e. granddaughter of Fred Tyson) and Susan Reverby (arguably the leading historian of the Study), and then presentations about applying this framework to 3 concrete areas of severe and ongoing “Black health disparities” (Jesse Milan, President/CEO of AIDSUnited on HIV/AIDS; Wangui Muigai on the history and current realities of Black maternal/infant mortality; and I hope [not yet confirmed] Rev. Jeffrey Brown [co-chair of Embrace Boston] on gun violence) the “Commentators” will be Dr. David Hodge, Associate Director of the National Center, who organized their Nov 2022 event, and Dr. Termika Smith, who organized and moderated the CDC event. Then Carmen J. Thornton, as granddaughter, will have closing words -- what her grandfather might say, and what she herself thinks, about MLK’s question: Where Do We Go From Here?